


the daughters of sinners and the sons of saints

by Lorical



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Books of Bayern Series - Shannon Hale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Elemental Magic, F/M, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Queerplatonic Relationships, Widobrave Week, canonical firebug caleb widogast, eventual background beauyasha and qp wildbros, hydrophobia, prison buddies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorical/pseuds/Lorical
Summary: When the world was created, everything spoke one language. Wind spoke to the hawk, the snail to the stone, the trees to the lakes. Then people, of all races and persuasions, began to walk the planes, and as they took control over the lands the words they spoke to each other became so powerful that the balance broke. From then on, creatures could only understand those of their own kind, and it has remained this way for as long as anyone can remember.However, it might be that not all has been lost forever...or: a caleb-and-nott focused retelling of roughly the first hundred episodes of campaign 2, with things a little different.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	1. raindrop

**Author's Note:**

> widobrave week day 1: fire & water
> 
> This is not at all based on the books of bayern besides the fact i'm borrowing their magic system, so don't worry about being familiar with them. 
> 
> The very basic gist of this au is each member of tm9 has the ability to "speak" to or manipulate one element (fire, water, wind, etc).
> 
> title from caleb trask by the crane wives

This cell is far too moist. 

First of all, the floor is spattered with thin pools of liquid-- which are either a result of the poorly sealed roof or, worse, remnants of whatever the guards give prisoners here to drink. They could even be from water seeping up through cracks, somehow an even less comforting thought. The hay scattered unevenly around the cell does little to remedy this.

Second of all, this same hay is mixed with unidentifiable bits of scrap, either tossed in to make prisoners more comfortable (doubtful) or left behind by criminals and vagrants that passed though. Either way, they give everything an awful smell and soak up the moisture, making it worse. The barred window does practically nothing to help, and is too far up the wall to see anything out of.

At least the room is empty of any other detainees-- one benefit of being arrested in the morning, though the few sips of good stuff she’d stolen are rapidly fading from her system and her mind is beginning to break through the haze, demanding she get out of here as fast as possible before the guards bring anyone else in or come with retribution for her violent struggle against them.

The problem, however, is that unlike the first three times, she was actually patted down, and they found and confiscated all the lockpicks she had that might be useful here, along with her treasures. She gave the blond one an extra scratch for that. Fuck him.

Nott sighs. Just for something to do as sobriety bears down upon her, she picks a few lengthy pieces of hay up (the least damp she can find--nothing approaching water is getting on her hands right now, thanks) and begins to braid them. It’s almost a mindless process, but having something to do with her fingers is calming. Now that her hair is so short, and greasy, and wrong-- she can’t get it to look nice in braids, not that she has regular access to mirrors anymore, or that she’d look in one if possible to avoid it. Seeing her reflection in water is bad enough.

As she gets to the end of the braid, something shifts in the corner of the cell. 

Nott jumps as the shape of a person comes into focus against what she had assumed was merely a pile of hay, and claps her claws over her mouth to muffle her short scream. She should have felt the way the moisture was different over there, should have sensed him-- but maybe it’s a good sign she didn’t. Maybe it’s going away.

As she tries not to try now, though, she can still feel the damp air and ground with oppressive clarity. However, the stranger, who she can now see is a human with extremely dirty red hair and a scruffy but hard face, doesn’t feel… wet. Their hands came up to their ears when she screamed, but now lower slowly as she stares. 

“Ah,” the human says, apparently just getting a good look at her in return. “You are… a goblin.” Nott scrunches her nose automatically, the mystery of his dry-ness leaving her mind. He has a quiet but strong zemnian accent. The soft way he pronounces the word almost makes her forget how terrible it is. 

“Yeah, I’m a goblin. Nice to meet you.”

The human brushes hay off his coat, revealing his chest and legs. Nott watches him carefully for signs he’s about to spring up and dash across the room to hit her, but he seems strangely unconcerned. “My name is--ah, Caleb,” he offers. “Caleb Widogast. Nice to meet you as well, though circumstances could be better, I suppose.” 

“That’s a cool name,” she says. “Mine’s Nott.”

Caleb tilts his head. “I am sure it’s perfectly fine.”

Nott’s mouth curls into a small smile, despite everything. This conversation is going uncommonly well. He hasn’t even shouted for the guards yet to ask for a cell re-assignment, though there are clearly plenty of empty ones around. Maybe they forgot he was in here by the time she was thrown in.

“No, it’s-- it is Nott,” she explains. “N-O-T-T.” 

“Oh, my apologies. That is funny,” Caleb says. 

She squints, trying to figure out if he’s serious. The clan sure thought it was funny, but he doesn’t seem to be laughing at her. “What’re you in for?” 

He shrugs, looking anxious and perhaps even a little sadder than the moment before. “A bit of petty theft, though you wouldn’t know it from my sentence. I’ll be here for another week, maybe longer if the guards forget about me.” 

Nott cracks a smile. “Shouldn’t be a crime to satisfy an itch every once in a while, if you ask me.” It’s strangely comforting that they’re here for the same offense. 

Her mouth is dry, and her hands have been sweating for a while now despite the chill air. She reaches for her braided hay again, but aborts the motion when she sees that it slipped into a puddle during their conversation. Shit. She needs a drink.

With nothing else to distract them, Nott and Caleb exchange small talk as the day stretches into afternoon. She waves off his brief concern about the way she shakes a bit from the hangover, and doesn’t mention the way he’s constantly fiddling with something looped around his neck. It works. Caleb seems like a very smart man, and Nott wonders how he came to be a dirty grifter like her when he confesses to a passion for books.

They fall silent for a few hours as the light from the window creeps across the floor and gets dimmer. It’s not uncomfortable. 

When moonlight starts drifting in, Caleb breathes a noticeable sigh. Nott glances over and tries resolutely to ignore his highlighted jaw and wistful, dreamy eyes. Not the time. Not the place. Not the man. 

“This is usually when I would escape, but my things have never been taken before,” he admits. 

Nott glances at the cell door. “I could try the lock,” she offers.

“Could you pick it?”

“Maybe,” she says, and gets to her feet to see. 

It’s not a hard lock to pick, if you have the right tools. Which is a big “if” when she does not, in fact, have anything approaching the right tools. Nott tries wedging a claw into it, but the angle from reaching around the bars is awkward, and she can’t see what she's doing. Usually she’s breaking into, not out of, closed doors.

She turns back to Caleb, letting him see her expression and figure it out for himself. “If I had my picks or even a bit of wire…”

He frowns. “I could try to get you something.”

Nott cocks her head, ears twisting. Caleb looks a bit sheepish when he says, “My cat was not caught. He’s waiting outside. I could persuade him to find some wire for you. I would have offered earlier, but I--”

“How are you going to ‘persuade’ him?” Nott asks, narrowing her eyes.

Caleb… doesn’t smile, but something in his expression lifts even as his eyes start to cloud over and stare past her. “You’ll see,” he replies cryptically.

* * *

  
  


They grab their things and make a break for it, ducking past the corner and into the trees to lose the guard. The prison is on the outside of this small town, so it’s not long before they feel safe enough to stop and look back. There’s enough shouting to indicate it won’t be long before they’re pursued. 

Nott curses under her breath and turns to keep going, but Caleb pulls on her sleeve to keep her in place for a moment. He takes a deep breath as she opens her mouth to ask him what he thinks he’s doing.

“I need-- I’d like it if you could trust me,” he says, staring into Nott’s eyes so intently she feels her cheeks flush. 

“Okay,” she says, questions forgotten. Caleb takes a deep breath, and she feels the strangest sensation of heat gathering around him, hovering like a cloud of summer weather before all at once it vanishes, and a corner of the prison, just visible through the trees, erupts in bright flame.

Nott stares in awe for a moment before he tugs on her sleeve again, looking anxious. “We should go now.”

“Yeah,” she echoes, tearing her gaze away from the spreading fire with more than a little difficulty. That’s sure to keep the guards busy long enough to forget about two petty criminals escaping. "I need a drink."

They join hands and hurry farther into the trees, Frumpkin trotting along at their feet.


	2. spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb, through episodes 1-27ish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> widobrave week day 3: magic 
> 
> enjoy :)

The tiefling girl, ignoring his silent prayers, leans over to their table.

Caleb can feel, the way he sometimes can, that there’s something different about her. The heat that would normally hover around her is blown away by an invisible breeze almost as soon as it appears. As she introduces herself (Jester, apparently) and he responds, his attention drifts to her two companions, who are eyeing him and Nott much more warily. They also feel strange, though it’s hard to pick out individuals from any distance in a room this full of people all giving off their own heat. 

The way Mollymauk persuades them into attending the circus gives Caleb a pang of fear, but though the carnie clearly has the talent, it’s equally apparent that he is unskilled at it, and probably not too much of a threat. Caleb can’t get a bead on his companion at all.

To his surprise, though he usually considers spending time among large groups of people anxiety-inducing, hanging out with these assholes on the way to the event is almost pleasant. Nott is certainly energized by having others to talk to, and he wonders if she might have been lonely, the weeks they’d spent conning people together.

When Fjord sweet-talks the crownsguard into letting them go, Caleb excuses himself at the earliest convenience to retch into some unfortunate bushes. He steers clear of the other men in the party, after that. They’re all good protection, but he’s taking off as soon as one of them tries to talk he or Nott into doing anything they don't want to. He can’t go through that again.

He's a little less afraid, by the time they reach Zadash. He stays close to Nott, just in case, but he can feel himself beginning to relax around the group--to let his walls down, at least a bit, and stop reaching for his fire every time one of them makes a quick movement. 

Beau takes a step out in front of him, and he stops. “I’ll let you into the library,” she says, “if you tell me why you’re so afraid of Fjord.”

Caleb takes a deep breath.

“You know I am… I have power you may only have heard of in stories,” he says quietly, feeling the heat in the room drifting around them. “My teacher, he was--is--something bigger than stories. A villain. He could talk people into jumping off a ledge if he wanted to, easy as breathing, and they’d do it with a smile, happy to please him.” 

Caleb sees Beau and Nott glance at each other and realizes they think this is an exaggeration. Perhaps it's better to let them believe so. Even without a perfect memory, Caleb is sure he would remember the empty, peaceful smiles of the victims as they stepped willingly to their deaths. Could remember feeling that bliss himself, that hard belief that if he just did as his master told him that everything was right, and everything was worth it.

“He convinced me and my fellow students that, to free ourselves from other connections and to prove our powers, we had to use them to... remove our worldly connections. Prevent our families from holding us back.”

Nott quietly raises a hand to her mouth. Beau’s gaze merely sharpens, still holding his steady. “Did you do it?” she asks. 

Caleb closes his eyes. The pain is always there, under the surface, beating at his skin, but today it is raging within him, mixing with his cursed fire and begging to be released, to be turned against his enemy. “Of course we did.”

He notices Nott struggling in the swamps, but doesn’t mention it to her. The wet atmosphere is like a blanket around him, both unnerving and comforting in the way it smothers his power. It makes him uncomfortable and snappish, a feeling that only fades once they settle into Hupperdook.

Caleb wakes to a cold camp outside the gnome city. The winter is creeping up on them, true, but this feels more unsettling, and it takes him a few moments to figure out that it’s because only half the bodies of the previous night still sleep nearby. 

The encounter goes wrong almost immediately. There are too many of them, even with Keg's help, and the weather too damp for him to burn from a distance, and they have strange powers but even more powerful weapons. Without Jester there to tend to them, as dubious of a healer as she is, it’s a losing battle. Caleb steps up to fight one of the bulkiest, but he has to dodge so often that concentrating is impossible. Finally, when his opponent seems distracted, he takes his opening and  _ grabs _ it. 

By the time the haze leaves his eyes, and the smoke ceases pouring into his lungs, Mollymauk Tealeaf is dead and the slavers are moving on ahead.

  
Nila talks their horses into hurrying towards Shadycreek Run, but they're clearly too late to stop the caravan from reaching the Nest.

When they meet him, dirty and tired from the trip through the woods and still sore about the mutilation of their party, Caduceus has tea already brewing in his kitchen. “The forest told me you were coming,” he says dismissively when questioned. It’s unclear if he means the breeze stirring their clothes, the strange birds that are barely shadows in the trees, even the trees themselves, or something else entirely.

Caleb burns Lorenzo to ash, his fire fanned to incredible strength by a wind from Beau’s direction. They don’t talk about it, busy trying to free their friends and make sure the Nest is safe for the moment. The heat in his chest, usually dark embers at rest, never stops smoldering after that battle, and Caleb twists away from Nott in his sleep trying not to fan the flames again. 

A day later, Caleb is glad to leave the Savalirwood, where he feels as if a single lapse of control might once again leave him standing in the ashes of a world destroyed by his hand. Not one of them is particularly cheerful after the events of the last week--it has been a harrowing few days, for both parts of the group. 

He is reluctant to return to the site of Mollymauk’s grave, but Fjord, Yasha, and Jester wish to pay respects (and, perhaps, confirm that this is not some convoluted prank). The late tiefling’s plot has not been disturbed, thankfully, but it seems… inadequate, somehow, for the true spark of passion he was in life. 

The Nein let Caduceus scatter his seeds, and watch Yasha turn and walk away into the storm before moving on themselves. After some discussion, they decide to travel to the Menagerie Coast to avoid the war and visit Jester’s mother.

Caleb shoves down his desire, increasingly insistent, that he release control and take all of their energy for himself. It would be so, so easy to pull the heat from their bodies and bundle it inside his chest for safekeeping, only to be spent when he finally exacts his sweet revenge.

Nott glances up at him as they walk like she can tell what he’s thinking, and Caleb can see in her eyes the same memories playing in her mind of their conversation in the inn.  _ Because I love them.  _ She holds out her hand.

He takes it and follows the group. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments greatly appreciated! tumblr @green-gremlins


	3. flood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nott, on the ocean (eps 30-47ish)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> widobrave week day 6: "this doesn't fit the prompt"

Nott hates the ocean as soon as she sees it. Surely an expanse of water that wide and deep is some god’s idea of a joke.

The worst part, though, is that everyone else jumps right in and starts having fun playing in the water. Nott ignores Jester’s calls to join them and pretends to be busy hunting seagulls, which does end up taking more of her concentration than she expected. But once that’s over, she’s… well. Trapped with her thoughts next to the overwhelming manifestation of most everything Nott doesn’t want to think about.

If she’s honest, that’s the worst part. Her head and heart are never close on the best of days, but getting this close to the ocean has split them apart like a tree struck by lightning. 

She knows, deep in the place inside of her she tries not to think of– she knows that if she ran to the water and reached out, it would reach back, and there is nothing in the world she wants more and yet nothing more frightening (and isn’t that a thought, when her husband and child still live without her in Felderwin--no, she can’t think about that).

When she drowned– when she died, tossed in the river like a sack of unwanted kittens, forced to feel nothing but the water as it distorted the laughter of the witch and rushed eagerly into her mouth and chest, unending and unyielding as it washed away her control, washed away her body, washed away her family and finally, cruelly, left her mind intact– something beyond her physical form broke against the onslaught and water burst through as if escaping a dam. 

She can feel it still resting there within her, always tugging at the back of her mind while she’s not distracted, begging her to bring the rain from the clouds, to let herself be enveloped by nearby bodies of water, to just let go. Her senses are different enough in this body, but somehow Nott knows that her hyper-awareness of water is not a goblin trait.

If she stops and really focuses (while sober, which obviously she takes pains to avoid being), she can feel the moisture in the air on a humid day, the water in rich soil, the water that moves through all creatures, and she can feel the power within her to call that fluid to life, to change its course and direct it wherever she chooses. 

As the Nein, with their newest firbolg member, wander Nicodranas in search of direction, Nott can’t drink enough to smother that sixth sense. The ocean breeze that seems to be omnipresent here is even more powerful than the stench of booze, and only fades once they’re finally indoors at the Lavish Chateau. Nott watches Jester reunite with her mother with relief, distracting herself from any thought of her own son by being aggressively happy for them. 

Somehow, it gets worse. 

Of all the things they could have decided to do next, stealing a boat and heading out over the water is definitively Nott’s least favorite option, but she’s outvoted by everyone else’s curiosity about Fjord’s weird spheres. Even Yasha, recently re-found, goes along with it because of a dream she had or something. 

Before the first day is over, Nott ends up curled in a hungover ball in a corner of the deck, as far from the water as she can get. 

If she thought Nicodranas was a storm, this is a hurricane. The air is saturated with water and salt, and the great moving mass of the Lucidian Ocean beneath the ship is overwhelming. It would be so easy to fall and slip under those waves, to be sucked under and lost forever, no tormenters or friends to save her. Even if she could somehow keep herself afloat with whatever magic is infecting her, Nott only needs to remember her glance over the railing to know that no matter how powerfully she feels the need to use it, it would eventually be useless in the face of the unforgiving sea. 

She tries to think of ways to distract herself, but all she can really come up with is bothering the crew, who are hopefully very busy making sure this extremely flimsy boat doesn’t sink right now, and talking to Caleb. However... he’s been hanging closer to everyone else since Molly died, and maybe that’s a good thing. She doesn’t want to hold him back from being friends with everyone else anymore, as much as she wishes she could lean on his warmth right now.

Everyone else has something going on. Beau has taken to standing in the Crow’s nest, for the purpose of listening to the wind, apparently. Jester joins her occasionally, but can mostly be found practicing her sweet-talking on the crew. Fjord is busy being the captain. Caduceus always seems a bit nauseous on the deck, but his experiments in the tiny ship’s kitchen have been successes for the most part. Nott can barely keep track of Yasha, the way she drifts around the boat like a ghost.  
  


Not even a week into their journey, Nott again has to re-evaluate how much worse the situation can possibly get. Avantika and her crew are shady as fuck, and Fjord is going evil or something, and even the stupid islands here that she expected to be a reprieve from the ocean are wet and swampy and full of lizard people. She decides that her magic flask is the most important purchase she has or will ever make.

After their trip to the temple on Urukaxl and back, Fjord calls them to a small meeting in the cabin he and Caduceus are staying in. 

“She has some sort of… control over the water,” he says, and Nott flinches. Caduceus looks at her strangely, but the others are all focused on Fjord telling his story, so she merely shrinks back into the shadows. Unfortunately, someone else did notice.

Caleb starts to warm in the edges of her awareness, and a moment later her cloak heats against her neck. Nott tries to shoot him a grateful look, but even as she does it she’s not sure what her face actually communicates. 

As they settle in for the night, she can feel her partner’s breathing become irregular for a few seconds before he whispers, “You know, Nott… if there is ever anything on your mind that you need to talk about, I am always here for you. You have helped me many times, and I am happy to do the same for you if you should ask.”

Nott shifts guiltily at the end of the bed, twisting one of her rings around on her finger as if focusing on it hard enough will get her out of this conversation or even off this ship entirely. “Thanks, Caleb,” she says quietly. “It’s nothing, really, you don’t have to worry about me.”

Caleb sighs, and she instantly feels worse for burdening him with worry for her. “Alright, Nott,” he responds at last, and she can’t quite tell if he spoke her name, or meant to say that it was not alright. His heat ebbs slowly as he slips into sleep.

She lies awake for minutes or hours more, feeling stray tears slip down her face with an awful awareness and thinking. 

Her wedding ring is long gone, probably sunk to the bottom of the river with the rest of Veth's life. But that doesn't mean she can't pretend, with a stolen ring in the dark. Doesn't mean she can't hope, in some twisted way, that her half-formed plan of getting Caleb to fix her works and one day she'll come marching home to her family as herself while the Nein wave a tearful goodbye.

But what good would she be as a housewife who can't do the dishes without someone else to fetch the water, with a penchant for drinking herself around the table, with a taste for the open road and monster blood? 

Who wants things she shouldn't?

Maybe it's a good thing that Caleb is clearly far from having enough control to burn the water out of her. 

Nott slips the ring off her finger and toys with it for a moment longer before tossing it off the end of the bed. She closes her eyes, ignoring the hollow noise as it impacts the deck. 

When Fjord comes back from the second temple claiming that he himself can now speak to the water, it’s the last straw. Nott slips out - doesn’t run, doesn’t flee, just walks away totally and wholly calm - and heads belowdecks alone to spend time fiddling with the cannons (she’s technically not allowed to mess with them without supervision, but she knows what she’s doing, so fuck that). 

Instead of going to find the party and telling them that hey, she knows how to work water too, what a funny coincidence, as she’s considered doing, she grabs a poorly hidden bottle of alcohol from the hold and drinks herself to sleep to avoid thinking so much she has a panic attack.  
  


Nott is a firm advocate for just going straight back to the coast after Darktow. They’re clearly not welcome on the seas anymore, and Fjord can’t be in good standing with his god anymore after betraying Avantika and getting her killed by the Plank King. 

However, she’s outvoted again, and the newly renamed Ball-Eater turns towards the place Fjord thinks the last temple is. 

This is not what she meant when she said she wanted to get off the boat. 

Fjord is so persuasive, though, when he offers her buttons, and tells her that she’ll be so helpful underwater. Jester chimes in earnestly to remind her that she can’t protect them from up on the boat, and Nott closes her eyes as she takes the plunge.

Without her trusty flask, and without Fjord’s power keeping them breathing, Nott doesn’t want to think about what would have happened to her, under the weight of miles and miles of water.

The Nein try to ask her about it, when they’re all drying off back on the deck, but she blocks them out and grabs a cloth to hurry off to Caleb's room. 

She shuts the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the end of what I have already completed, and also my main content for widobrave week, but I do plan to finish this fic relatively soon.


	4. wildfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb, episodes 49-69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, I'm back! the other chapters are as of right now both about half-written because I can't write in order for the life of me but they should be out soonish

It’s hard to say which revelation rocks him hardest.

Standing on the banks of Felderwin’s River, Caleb distances himself from the words falling out of his mouth, explaining his name and his time at Solstryce, and wonders how the fuck they all got here. 

Nott is Veth is not Nott and not Veth anymore, drowned into a new form by an act of true, powerful magic that Caleb struggles to comprehend. 

She was married--no, she is married--to another man, and she has a child, and she had a life before meeting him in a dirty jail cell, and she won’t even look at him right now. 

He’d been so sure of her at his side; trusted her beyond reason since before she even earned it; and then she had earned it, a thousand times over, with every time she palmed stolen food to him or pulled off a con perfectly, every time she took a hit in a fight for one of them or warned of danger ahead.

And all the while they’d been lying to one another, and even as Caleb told her and Beau about his past he’d never suspected any part of hers. 

And although he knows that should occupy his mind right now, he can’t stop seeing the assembly members walking together in the ashes, can’t stop wanting to fill his ears with wax and tie his hands together to ensure he is not convinced again that a family -- his family -- should be burned for their sins. 

He lingers at Nott’s door, that evening, feeling her familiar warmth pooling on the bed, rubbing his lucky stone in his fingers.

He turns away.

The tunnel smothers his power even more than the ocean or the swamps, and Caleb is almost pathetically grateful. He might be tired, and stupid with lethargy, but he isn’t likely to be snapping at anyone else or trying to rush ahead and get himself killed. 

Xhorhas is strange.

When Caleb isn’t lost in his own head feeling sorry for himself like a selfish bastard, he’s looking at the rest of the Nein. Most of them are in a wretched state. Fjord and Jester are doing alright, but Caduceus and Beau are fidgety and jump at loud noises, putting everyone on edge. 

Yasha never seems like she’s fully present; she stares into the distance and hides her face whenever they pass through a settlement. This is ostensibly her homeland, but it seems to make her more uneasy than anything else. He can relate.

Nott is… worse than usual. 

Caleb won’t lie to himself about this: he knows how hard she’s fighting to keep going. To lead them into enemy territory, into the heart of a nation they know precious little about, to find her husband. Beau and Jester seemed reasonably certain they’d gotten word to him, but not that he understood their voices on the wind weren’t just hallucinations.

And he knows he should try to help. To be there for her, the way she always is for him, especially as she starts letting herself play with water drops, starts pulling condensation out of the air for them to drink when supplies are low, and he can see how much that’s a battle of its own. 

But he’s not certain he knows how, or that he would be much more help than her bottomless flask. 

When she twists the river waters to let her cross with the rope, and Fjord laughs at her as he simply parts the waters entirely, Caleb takes the rope anyway. She smiles at him. 

Maybe that’s enough.

Underneath the well, Caleb is overwhelmed by the violent spirit. She whispers in his ear, and the dark embers in his heart leap, and Caleb, for the first time in a long time, simply lets go.

He burns.

Something stops him from killing them directly. It may be the voice hissing in his ear, telling him to let them die slowly, it may be his own subtle cowardice, it may be what scraps of honor he has, that he does not wish to kill even his opponents by betrayal. 

It may be a part of him he thought he buried, under the gilt and then the guilt, that wants nothing more than to live, and knows if he does burn them, that there will be no going back, and he will be consumed by the flames too. 

Whatever the case, Caleb shies away from letting heat jump into their hearts, and they survive long enough to knock the spirit away and let sense back into his head. As he comes to, he feels a sharp pain, and he remembers… overdoing it. Pushing too much heat in, and out, and ignoring it when something burst. In a panic, Caleb tries to shut his power out, to cling to the cold wall and make it stop fighting to be released. To stop hearing echoes in his ears.

It doesn’t retreat.

In his chest the fire, the power, is leaking out of his core and into his body, flowing through his veins like a poison. Underneath the tears and bruises in his skin, it feels like a small thing, but he knows somehow that tomorrow, when they have faded, it will not.

He says nothing to the rest of them. They’ve been through enough today. If it gets worse, and he’s no longer reliable in combat, he’ll tell them. 

He doesn’t.

Nott and her husband are reunited, and Caleb tries to stay in the background while they talk, trying not to track every shift in temperature between the two of them in the back of his mind when he isn’t looking. Tries not to compare himself to Yeza. 

Beau notices, because of course she does. 

“Are you in love with her?” she asks. And of course, she would simplify it like that, of course she would make it a yes-or-no. Caleb shoves the begging flames back down, as is becoming an exhausting habit, and sighs. 

“No,” he says, and it’s a lie, but he doesn’t feel like explaining himself. 

After Beau has -- blessedly -- left his room, he stares at the ceiling trying to distract himself from how easily he can picture it going up in flames, how if he tries he can already hear the screams echoing out into the supernatural dark skies of Rosohna.

He and Nott have come a long way from the admittedly codependent mess they were a year ago, but imagining living without her at all is like imagining living without a limb. He does love her, as much as a wreck of a human like him can love anyone, and he is jealous of Yeza. But it’s not like that, not like Beau assumed, not like it was with-- with Astrid. 

He just wants to be by her side, for as far as they can go. As far as she’ll take them. 

And when she looks at Yeza like that, when she talks to him in hushed tones about the life they had before she died, when she talks about getting back to Luc, it’s only a reminder that that place by her side was already filled before he met her, that he’s automatically a lower priority in her heart now that she has her real family back, that their partnership is temporary.

Blood is thicker than water, after all. 

It’s becoming almost unbearable to be around the group in enclosed spaces. He can almost see the heat their bodies give off, twisting into the air and begging to be used to set everything alight. The haze over his vision, which before had only appeared briefly after intense battles, is near ever-present now. In the corners of his eyes, he spots the illusions of burned corpses, charred from the inside out.

Whenever someone brushes past too close, the warmth feels like it would burn Caleb if it touched him. Like he would make it burn. Only Nott and Fjord are bearable to stay close to, and he flinches away from even them, knowing any comfort he might gain would be uncomfortable at best for them.

He knows he’s been overdoing it, these past months; that at some point he passed a point he couldn’t return from, that in order to protect the group he had to stop protecting himself from the worst effects. 

But how is he meant to continue? It gets harder and harder to hold back, and not even just because of how badly he needs to burn; because he wants to protect his friends, and there’s a sick satisfaction that never quite left him in watching something living crumble into ash. What better way to fuel those desires than in battle?

And in Xhorhas, as they fought their way to the capital, there was battle aplenty.

In Xhorhas, after they negotiate a mercenary contract with the crown, there is battle aplenty.

In Xhorhas, where Yasha’s past comes knocking rudely on their door, there will be battle aplenty.

Each time they enter into a larger chamber, even in this creepy, fucked-up dungeon, Caleb is relieved to be able to breathe again. At the opposite end of the group, though, Beau shivers. She’s wrapped her ears in a messy headband, and stays close behind Yasha even as the larger woman forges ahead. When Caleb stands near her, he can feel dozens of tiny breezes drifting around her, tugging at her wraps and raiments. 

She’s been overusing her talents too, he realizes, and grimaces. There’s nothing he can do about it. 

“Avenge me,” the devil commands. His words are as powerful as any force of nature, and Caleb’s body flinches, a full shudder that almost knocks him off his feet. But they fly over his head even as Obann disintegrates, and he realizes with looming horror that the words were not meant for him. 

Yasha, on the other side of the room, helping Beau stand, blinks, and he sees something in her eyes change. 

He feels heat, unmistakable, sucked out of the air around her, drawn into her core.

In a detached sort of way, from the part of him still merely observing events as they happen, he notices that she isn’t very practiced at it, and that she’s going to hurt herself. That he could reach out with his mind and snuff the flames out… but not without hurting her more. 

So he keeps watching as fire races up Beau’s arms and she recoils from Yasha in terror, frantically batting her arms through the air as if that will help. 

Behind Caleb, the monstrosity Obann awakened roars with renewed fury, and he’s distracted as he tries to summon heat into its blade and fires underneath its feet to slow it as it slashes at Fjord. 

After a few terrifying moments of this, Jester runs up to help the half-orc, leaving Caduceus to get up on his own. Caleb turns back to Beau and Yasha.

The fire has spread. The mold and dark weeds that had grown out of the floor and walls during this place’s abandonment have provided an unexpected source of fuel, and Caleb can feel the delight streaming into the air with the smoke as his element spills over the floor, inching towards him.

Beau’s staff is doing a poor job of pushing Yasha back, as her massive blade swings out again and again, missing Beau more and more narrowly each time, but the flames around the lithe woman flicker out whenever she dances too close to them, and Caleb notes with relief that she has figured out how to use her hangers-on to her advantage in this fight in more than one way.

Veth switches taking shots at the Hand to Yasha, from wherever she’s hiding at the moment, at last giving Beau an opening to disengage and dash back to where Caleb seizes the opportunity to fan the flames, pushing them into a circle around Yasha, who is clearly not practiced enough to find her way through them. 

Her face looks dark, and angry, and as she stares back at Caleb he realizes just how terrifying it is to be on the other end of her sword. 

Beau takes a moment to recuperate, holding Caleb steady as he burns, and then takes off to join the fight against the beast, which is locked in a clear stalemate. 

Behind him, Caleb manages to keep track of their battle, and when he realizes what his friends are attempting to do he nearly loses control over the fire, letting Yasha take a step forward. 

She’s figured out that he doesn’t like hurting her, and has been testing him by making feints to every side, trying to bait him into a moment of weakness. But with the reassurance of what he thinks the Nein’s plan is, Caleb holds on. 

Gradually, bit by agonizing bit, Fjord and Beau back the Laughing Hand up towards the flames, and Caleb draws into himself, ignoring the way he’s nearly lost track of his physical form. He shouts, or he thinks he does, as the fire roars into a wall between them and both of their adversaries.

There is a lot of incomprehensible debate and shouting from the group, and somewhere, Caleb’s body is grabbed and carried off. It is held at the entrance of the room as he focuses on keeping the wall up, keeping everyone safe; keeping the dangerous people with swords trapped. 

He can hear Fjord shouting again nearby, trying to talk Yasha into coming with them, and something about his voice makes Caleb shake. He stops listening. He keeps the flames going.

As the door shuts behind them, and his body is taken farther and farther away from the room, he keeps the flames going. 

Caleb comes to at the entrance to the tomb. He feels sick. He feels hot. It reminds him, in a way, of having a fever as a kid, but surely as a child there was not this tearing, burning pain throughout his body. 

The group doesn’t notice his consciousness, even Nott, kneeling by his head, but he strains to hear their conversation. 

They’re arguing.

He passes out again, and somehow it doesn’t help with the pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading :)
> 
> fun fact: this chapter is about twice the length of any of the previous three and I wrote most of it in like 4 hours. sometimes inspiration hits you with a brick

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and leave a comment :)
> 
> just to clarify: nott/veth has a crush on caleb in canon so that's present but in this fic they're very much qpps.


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